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Roundup Top Ten for April 3, 2020

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Immigrant Farmworkers are Heroes

by Eladio Bobadilla

Tracing Cesar Chavez's transforming views on immigration may shed light on how we can support farmworkers’ rights today.

For More Than A Century, Americans Fine-Tuned The Rules Of Democracy. Why Have We Stopped?

by Gregory P. Downs

The United States has survived not by keeping the same system but by transforming its rules at crucial moments.

The Internet Archive Chooses Readers

by Karin Wulf

To elevate the needs of the reader above all others is to dismiss the labor of archivists, authors, compositors, designers, editors, librarians, marketers, metadata creators, and all the other myriad people involved in bringing knowledge into being and into the marketplace.

The Cult of the Shining City Embraces the Plague

by Jared Yates Sexton

Those who see Trump as a messianic figure believe the coronavirus will put a fallen world right again.

Sanctions Are Inhumane—Now, and Always

by Aslı U. Bâli, Aziz Rana

In a world imperiled by global pandemic, it is long past time to put an end to sanctions—including new ones against Iran—and to reconstruct U.S. foreign policy around international solidarity.

When Americans Fell in Love with The Ideal of ‘One World’

by Samuel Zipp

In 1943, failed presidential candidate Wendell Willkie advanced a strikingly anti-racist, anti-colonial plan to bring the planet together.

Why Politicians Can’t Stop Talking About “Folks”

by John Patrick Leary

Most politicians are playacting: a privileged cohort of other-than-real Americans desperately trying to convince a mass following that they are, indeed, just plain folks.

Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

American life has been suddenly and dramatically upended, and, when things are turned upside down, the bottom is brought to the surface and exposed to the light.

The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response

by Katherine Stewart

Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.

The Trouble with Triscuits

by Charles Louis Richter

Where did the name of this popular snack come from? An exercise in historical reasoning.